_Vague Religious Feeling._--Fig. 14 shows us another shapeless rolling
cloud, but this time it is blue instead of crimson. It betokens that
vaguely pleasurable religious feeling--a sensation of devoutness rather
than of devotion--which is so common among those in whom piety is more
developed than intellect. In many a church one may see a great cloud of
deep dull blue floating over the heads of the congregation--indefinite
in outline, because of the indistinct nature of the thoughts and
feelings which cause it; flecked too often with brown and grey, because
ignorant devotion absorbs with deplorable facility the dismal tincture
of selfishness or fear; but none the less adumbrating a mighty
potentiality of the future, manifesting to our eyes the first faint
flutter of one at least of the twin wings of devotion and wisdom, by the
use of which the soul flies upward to God from whom it came.
[Illustration: FIG. 14. VAGUE RELIGIOUS FEELING]
Strange is it to note under what varied circumstances this vague blue
cloud may be seen; and oftentimes its absence speaks more loudly than
its presence. For in many a fashionable place of worship we seek it in
vain, and find instead of it a vast conglomeration of thought-forms of
that second type which take the shape of material objects. Instead of
tokens of devotion, we see floating above the "worshippers" the astral
images of hats and bonnets, of jewellery and gorgeous dresses, of horses
and of carriages, of whisky-bottles and of Sunday dinners, and sometimes
of whole rows of intricate calculations, showing that men and women
alike have had during their supposed hours of prayer and praise no
thoughts but of business or of pleasure, of the desires or the anxieties
of the lower form of mundane existence.
Yet sometimes in a humbler fane, in a church belonging to the
unfashionable Catholic or Ritualist, or even in a lowly meeting-house
where there is but little of learning or of culture, one may watch the
deep blue clouds rolling ceaselessly eastward towards the altar, or
upwards, testifying at least to the earnestness and the reverence of
those who give them birth. Rarely--very rarely--among the clouds of blue
will flash like a lance cast by the hand of a giant such a thought-form
as is shown in Fig. 15; or such a flower of self-renunciation as we see
in Fig. 16 may float before our ravished eyes; but in most cases we must
seek elsewhere for these signs of a higher development.
_Upward Rush of Devotion._--The form in Fig. 15 bears much the same
relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of
Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a
more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the
nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of
highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15.
This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into
manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact.
The man who feels such devotion as this is one who knows in whom he has
believed; the man who makes such a thought-form as this is one who has
taught himself how to think. The determination of the upward rush points
to courage as well as conviction, while the sharpness of its outline
shows the clarity of its creator's conception, and the peerless purity
of its colour bears witness to his utter unselfishness.
[Illustration: FIG. 15. UPWARD RUSH OF DEVOTION]
_The Response to Devotion._--In Fig. 17 we see the result of his
thought--the response of the LOGOS to the appeal made to Him, the truth
which underlies the highest and best part of the persistent belief in an
answer to prayer. It needs a few words of explanation. On every plane of
His solar system our LOGOS pours forth His light, His power, His life,
and naturally it is on the higher planes that this outpouring of divine
strength can be given most fully. The descent from each plane to that
next below it means an almost paralysing limitation--a limitation
entirely incomprehensible except to those who have experienced the
higher possibilities of human consciousness. Thus the divine life flows
forth with incomparably greater fulness on the mental plane than on the
astral; and yet even its glory at the mental level is ineffably
transcended by that of the buddhic plane. Normally each of these mighty
waves of influence spreads about its appropriate plane--horizontally, as
it were--but it does not pass into the obscuration of a plane lower than
that for which it was originally intended.
[Illustration: FIG. 17. RESPONSE TO DEVOTION]
Yet there are conditions under which the grace and strength peculiar to
a higher plane may in a measure be brought down to a lower one, and may
spread abroad there with wonderful effect. This seems to be possible
only when a special channel is for the moment opened; and that work must
be done from below and by the effort of man. It has before been
explained that whenever a man's thought or feeling is selfish, the
energy which it produces moves in a close curve, and thus inevitably
returns and expends itself upon its own level; but when the thought or
feeling is absolutely unselfish, its energy rushes forth in an open
curve, and thus does _not_ return in the ordinary sense, but pierces
through into the plane above, because only in that higher condition,
with its additional dimension, can it find room for its expansion. But
in thus breaking through, such a thought or feeling holds open a door
(to speak symbolically) of dimension equivalent to its own diameter, and
thus furnishes the requisite channel through which the divine force
appropriate to the higher plane can pour itself into the lower with
marvellous results, not only for the thinker but for others. An attempt
is made in Fig. 17 to symbolise this, and to indicate the great truth
that an infinite flood of the higher type of force is always ready and
waiting to pour through when the channel is offered, just as the water
in a cistern may be said to be waiting to pour through the first pipe
that may be opened.
The result of the descent of divine life is a very great strengthening
and uplifting of the maker of the channel, and the spreading all about
him of a most powerful and beneficent influence. This effect has often
been called an answer to prayer, and has been attributed by the ignorant
to what they call a "special interposition of Providence," instead of to
the unerring action of the great and immutable divine law.
_Self-Renunciation._--Fig. 16 gives us yet another form of devotion,
producing an exquisitely beautiful form of a type quite new to us--a
type in which one might at first sight suppose that various graceful
shapes belonging to animate nature were being imitated. Fig. 16, for
example, is somewhat suggestive of a partially opened flower-bud, while
other forms are found to bear a certain resemblance to shells or leaves
or tree-shapes. Manifestly, however, these are not and cannot be copies
of vegetable or animal forms, and it seems probable that the explanation
of the similarity lies very much deeper than that. An analogous and even
more significant fact is that some very complex thought-forms can be
exactly imitated by the action of certain mechanical forces, as has been
said above. While with our present knowledge it would be unwise to
attempt a solution of the very fascinating problem presented by these
remarkable resemblances, it seems likely that we are obtaining a glimpse
across the threshold of a very mighty mystery, for if by certain
thoughts we produce a form which has been duplicated by the processes of
nature, we have at least a presumption that these forces of nature work
along lines somewhat similar to the action of those thoughts. Since the
universe is itself a mighty thought-form called into existence by the
LOGOS, it may well be that tiny parts of it are also the thought-forms
of minor entities engaged in the same work; and thus perhaps we may
approach a comprehension of what is meant by the three hundred and
thirty million Devas of the Hindus.
[Illustration: FIG. 16. SELF-RENUNCIATION]
This form is of the loveliest pale azure, with a glory of white light
shining through it--something indeed to tax the skill even of the
indefatigable artist who worked so hard to get them as nearly right as
possible. It is what a Catholic would call a definite "act of
devotion"--better still, an act of utter selflessness, of self-surrender
and renunciation.